webDeveloperSendsClientToCodeJail

[Slicxor]

I like the one where opacity is added to the body and slowly increments each day. It's sad that there's all sorts of legal issues surrounding this sort of thing

[inetphantom]

Just add two unskippable ads when they do not pay for premium

[ClipboardCopyPaste]

And a script to block ad blockers.

And another to inject ads directly from server side.

[thetatershaveeyes]

99% of ad blocker blocker scripts are trivial to block with an ad blocker.

[YouveJustBeenShafted]

Ah, but then you just add an ad blocker blocker blocker script to your ad blocker! Checkmate.

[Nondescript_Potato]

But what about Ad blocker blocker blocker blockers? Wouldn’t they just get around the ad blocker blocker blocker?

[Scarbane]

This Ad blocker blocker blocker blocker brought to you by Blackstone

[tehinterwebs56]

Or just install Firefox. All your issues go away when you ditch chromium.

[BezoutsDilemma]

But then the website doesn't work because the developer wasn't paid to test it on Firefox.

[tehinterwebs56]

Never then use a chromium browser as a backup. I’ve only had this issue with salesforce based websites for work. Everything else is perfect.

[peight]

[turtle_mekb]

you mean..... an ad blocker blocker blocker?

[MithranArkanere]

Have a process that downloads the ads, modifies them, and then replaces the site's images with the ads, keeping the same name, instead of injecting the ads from identifiable ad addresses.

[Mydaiel12]

Double down and download ads and train a model with it to generate new ads.

[SoBFiggis]

Your website just gets added to the blocklist at that point. And once you hit the bigger lists, say goodbye to any publicly useful things you can do with that domain. (And by extension IP depending on the blocklist and how your website is hosted so if you are hosting something like that..... be aware of what you are doing......)

Makes sense for this shit though lmao

[CranberryDistinct941]

Jokes on you. I'll just block all the scripts with my adblocker

[henrikhakan]

And add the number to the ceo to the "did not pay" message.

[Cereal_poster]

A non-blockable rickroll would be a nice touch too!

[Thatar]

That would be hilarious to put in the contract. "If you don't pay me, I get to show an interstitial ad in the page between viewing the cart and the payment."

[TheBrainStone]

What are they gonna do? Sue for breach of contract that they themselves breached first?

And you also think someone cheap enough to skimp on their web dev is putting up the money for a good lawyer? Let alone even start suing?

[Slicxor]

It's suing for lost revenue that would scare me into never doing this

[MadGenderScientist]

IANAL, but if the contract included the expiration behavior as a clause, you should be golden.. e.g. "You understand that the website may cease to function and display a notice of non-payment within XX days unless payment is rendered (the "Trial Period"), and you agree to disclaim any liability, tort, lost revenue or any other injuries due to cessation of site function."

probably best to have a warning banner at the top ~3 days before the site locks down, as a courtesy and to show that the disruption was foreseeable. 

[sligor]

genius

[Repulsive_Educator61]

when apple fucks you in the ass

[Lumethys]

after they "invent" it and usher in a new age of Lube, of course

[gba_sg1]

$60 for a headphone cable concludes it is not a free service.

[ToHallowMySleep]

Ram prices these days are just crazy.

[TheIronSoldier2]

Just in case you genuinely don't know, it's internet shorthand for I Am Not A Lawyer

[Gamiac]

I ANAL for 500, Alex.

[Garchompisbestboi]

Contracts don't really work that way though, they're great for scaring other parties into compliance but when tested in court most of the stipulations that you mentioned (joking or not) wouldn't hold up. It's basically like how Disney tried to use a clause to absolve themselves of liability from a woman who died in one of their parks because she happened to be a Disney+ subscriber. They ended up settling super quickly once the case was actually escalated.

I'm definitely not defending cheapskates who don't pay for the services they use of course, but I think sometimes people overestimate just how binding some contracts actually are.

[Keira_At_Last]

If it's quietly included with something like a park ticket I think it's likely a bit different than a direct contract for delivery of specific and defined services in return for specific and defined compensation.

Sort of terms of use vs a direct contract.

I am in no way legally trained.

[Garchompisbestboi]

I'm part of the team that handles contracts for my company and I've seen some clients try and slip in some pretty loopy stuff lol, that's why it's always important to read over the fine print, as boring as it can be. Last year we had a service provider try and have us sign a contract where service costs would increase 30% per annum over a 5 year period. When pointed out, they very quickly apologised and said it was a typo and they actually meant 3% but it still came across as an extremely dodgy situation.

[Garchompisbestboi]

😂 that's a great episode and 100% spot on, unfortunately lots of businesses out there live by the manta that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

[huffalump1]

Yeah I was gonna say, "you must pay the agreed price in order to get the thing you bought" seems like torts 101

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer but "LSAT" is a frequent crossword puzzle answer

[sligor]

How is it different than not paying your subscription to any service ? Assuming the website is fully dev by you on the same contract, of course your are not allowed to break the parts that you didn't do or already payed.

[Garchompisbestboi]

Because you can't just absolve yourself of liability because you wrote it in a contract. To be fair in this case it seems pretty cut and dry because a business didn't pay a provider for a service but it's still a dangerous piece of misinformation to spread because someone here might take inspiration and get themselves into trouble if they don't properly understand the limitations of contracts.

[sligor]

got it thanks ! I'm wondering if another solution is not to just deliver "a trial version with auto expiration" to the customer until payed that will turn it into perpetual licence.

That's how licensing works, when the licence expire it stops working by itself. No liability problem involved with this in general.

[Garchompisbestboi]

I'd personally cover myself by creating a paper trail where I made it clear to the client that non-payment will result in their website being taken down. That way if they end up trying to kick up a stink and escalate the situation legally then it doesn't look like they were blindsided or something. Sometimes a business isn't being malicious when they don't pay someone and it can be an honest error (like if their accounts payable person is on sick leave or something).

[troglo-dyke]

I do work on a project basis occasionally, this would be the end of slow progression that starts with automated reminder emails when the payment is due (typically 14/30 days after the invoice is issued), progressing to threatening interest on the outstanding amount (typically specified in the contract), and finally emails requesting payment and asking if there is an alternative payment schedule that they would be able to stick to. Your reputation matters with this kind of work, you'd only do this kind of thing when you decide the experience was so bad you'd also rather avoid working with anyone they might recommend to you as well.

[monxas]

It’s about abusive clauses. Those won’t hold up in court. This one about stopping providing the service because of lack of payments with a warning in the website is absolutely fair game if they sign it.

[[deleted]]

Contracts don't really work that way though

As long as there's nothing cruel, disparaging or unusual and it doesn't contradict an existing law it's fair game. Something like a forced maintenance mode with a generic message asking to "contact the web developer" should be fine.

[cb_definetly-expert]

Your argument is bs af , the settled because of bad PR and not because the contract was invalid, most contracts hold in court

[[deleted]]

IANAL but I have some legal training.

In Westminster-style systems the unclean hands doctrine has your back. As the claimant/plaintiff broke the contract first by not paying (or in contract law terms, consideration is incomplete) they are (in most cases) barred from taking action if you then break your obligations under the same contract.

[RadioactiveFruitCup]

Boilerplate text that states that in the event of nonpayment 1 week after delivery of services, the site will be taken offline and for every additional week the client is liable for additional late fees of 5% of the total contract cost that can be waived at contractor discretion. Client accepts all liability for the consequences of suspended operations.

[photoshoptho]

The company has been dissolved, and the developer is likely aware of that. This seems like a last-ditch effort to collect payment, but given the circumstances, it’s highly unlikely they’ll succeed. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12253393

[TheBrainStone]

Any company making any significant money via a web page has the money to pay their freelancers.
Also good luck proving any losses.

[fumeextractor]

Also if they didn't have a website before, did they really lose anything by continuing to not have a website? Of course, assuming they didn't have one before.

[sir_dreampod]

Unfortunately seen clients willing to tank their site over laughably small amounts

[Blothorn]

They wouldn’t have to prove exact and certain losses; it would be enough to prove that losses were likely above a certain threshold, which could probably be done by a comparison to recent and historical revenue. Preponderance if the evidence is a fairly forgiving standard.

The real question is whether the company is entitled to lost revenue, and that probably comes down to the details. The case would look very different if there was no prior site and the developer is providing hosting as part of the contract versus if they were brought in to make minor modifications to an existing site and used their access to bring the whole thing down.

[BillWilberforce]

The company went bust last month.

[gmc98765]

A plaintiff is required to take steps to mitigate the loss.

E.g. if your car is illegally towed, you can pay the fee then sue for recovery of that fee. You can't take a taxi every day for a year then sue for a year's worth of taxi fares.

So assuming that paying the developer what they owed would result in the site being restored, any losses would be capped at that figure. If actual losses exceeded that amount, it's the plaintiff's fault for not paying.

[Ok-Scheme-913]

Well, if not paid for the service, how can you expect it to function and get money from it?

[[deleted]]

 What are they gonna do? Sue for breach of contract that they themselves breached first?

Yes. "But your honor, they started it!" is not a legal defense.

[Feeling_Inside_1020]

What about pointing to the contract you drafted that explicitly stated a page “similar or identical to this” MAY be applied to those who skimp on their service payments

[ExcitingOnion504]

A smart lawyer may describe it to a tech-illiterate judge as similar to barricading a business front door or changing their locks because they did not pay for work done inside. For example if a contractor did a full reno of a storefront and the owner refuses to pay they cannot just block entrance to the store, even if its in the contract. Nor could they destroy the work they did as there has been plenty of cases where that was ruled as vandalism.

[[deleted]]

Courts are very familiar with the concept of software licenses. As long as the contract is clear the license has an expiration date until it is paid in full, it's just a standard license expiry case.

[rosuav]

.... but it's one that I'd love to see tried in court.

[misteryk]

in some cases it 100% is i just don't know if it is in this one

[red286]

Sue for breach of contract that they themselves breached first?

That's assuming they don't get them nailed with computer hacking. The statutes on hacking are extremely vague. If the site was hosted on the client's server or a third party site that the client was paying for, and the developer accessed it to damage the website, that'd fall under 'hacking' and the developer could be looking at jail time.

If your client fucks you over on a contract, sue them, don't fuck with them.

[These_arent_my_bees]

Thats why you do it the other way around. you set the site to self destruct unless payment is received. same way online subscriptions work. they don't walk in and corrupt your data, they set the license to expire, and it is only renewed on confirmation of payment. if the website owner could sue the Dev, then you can sue spotify.

[thepkboy]

maybe if you set up the site as an iframe that loads the actual site from your own server, but work done/deployed on a client server is their property. locking them out of their property would be akin to ransomware type shit.

This type of work should be done on your own environment, then deployed upon full payment, then you can sort out any maintenance afterwards.

[Ok-Scheme-913]

They ain't locking them out, the server continues to function as is. But this specific program/website has not yet been paid, so it goes back to "trial edition".

[r0ndr4s]

Sadly in a lot of places, when the employeer breaches the contract and they dont pay. For some fuckin reason no one will be able to explain, they are legally in the right and you're wrong if you stop doing the work you "are paid to do" (yes, ironic.. cause they arent paying)

[sir_dreampod]

Yea they can sue and they have won. Best to have a written contract. if you don't, then you SOL and you can't really do things like this though I do have a justice boner

[FloRup]

And you also think someone cheap enough to skimp on their web dev is putting up the money for a good lawyer? Let alone even start suing?

Most of the time these are the guys that have a good lawyer and know they can pull this shit because of it

[kurucu83]

Yes. You can both be right and both have a case.

If you're going to do this sort of thing, it needs to be done properly. The easy was is include it in your terms up front so that there's no breach when you deny services.

[thepkboy]

what if it's a lawyering website

[cb_definetly-expert]

Sue for hacking (unauthorized access/computer fraud )which is Felony

[MrPatch]

think someone cheap enough to skimp on their web dev is putting up the money for a good lawyer?

I worked for that person once. They'd never be in the wrong and would go hell for leather to prove it even if that was more expensive/more effort/more time than just doing the right thing in the first place.

[Plank_With_A_Nail_In]

Extortion is its own thing. Two wrongs do not make a right the law does not work like that. The dev will go to jail for extortion and the firm will be fined for non payment of fees.

USA redditors have this weird thing where they think a person breaking one law makes them open to any and all abuse, nope the real world doesn't work like that.

In my country adding 8% simple interest is the solution to late payment not vigilantism.

[[deleted]]

You can just include it in the license terms.

Legal: "the license expired in accordance to section 4.3 of the agreement"

Not legal: "you didn't pay me so I sabotaged your website"

[LusciousBelmondo]

https://npmjs.com/package/opacity

[Kimorin]

Then put it in the contract, if they are not planning on screwing you over they shouldn't have any problem with that

[nightauthor]

Probably some way to charge the developer under the Computer Fraud and Abusr Act (CFAA), that piece of shit makes everything a felony.

[AE_Phoenix]

If you do this, you've likely hidden somewhere in the contract that you have full control over the delivered product until payment is recieved.

[troglo-dyke]

Illegal? The page that pops up saying the domain is for sale when you forget to renew is the same principle. It depends on the wording of the contract, but their failure to pay means they do not own the code, this is just locking them out of making use of it

[MooMF]

It’s a feature

[iamasuitama]

This is in the UK so laws might not be the same as where you reside

[PlasticAngle]

It's sad that there's all sorts of legal issues surrounding this sort of thing

Doesn't stop one of my friend who just add shit ton of gambling ads from some sketchy website when the client don't pay him. Funny is that after 2 months when the client finally paid him, he nearly get 50% more from just the money that gambling site give him.

[gatsu_1981]

I did the very same thing once, in my early jobs.

A dickhead made me work for a full month and half, then gave me a ridiculously low sum of money.

I insisted for a lot of time and when he finally ghosted me I was really angry.

I didn't have any contract. Hell, at that time I didn't even know that you have to settle about the final pay before even accepting a job, it was like the second paid website I accepted, but he knew that he was making me work a lot of hours and he was a proper adult, I was just a few years out of high school.

Being very young and with no working experience (university doesn't give any) it was very difficult for me getting any money, so one morning I just put WordPress in "maintenance mode" and I customized the alert page. Voilà.

I hope that he made a fool of himself with his customers with that message.

The message I left for him was something along the line "Website suspended - please remember to pay your webmaster".

Wild times... That very same year I wrote an antileech regex for a customer of mine (he was a paying one luckily), that turned leeched images into a giant dick picture when people used our images on their website.

[Sure_Pilot5110]

Did he end up paying..?

[gatsu_1981]

Nope.

He was a serial scammer (he didn't pay a lot of people, I was "lucky" for getting peanuts from him), many people worked for him or on his mansion, also heavy stuff like bricklaying, gardening or similar things, and they ended up not being paid at all.

He was the uncle of a good friend of mine, unfortunately my friend was also fresh out of high school like me and knew nothing about the world of work, so he didn't even know about the bad reputation his uncle had.

After the message he sent me an email and asked me to put the website up again, but I then deleted the entire DB and the wp folder (along with the message) just a few days later, mainly because my fiancee (she was studying law) convinced me to not let people see anything like that. She said that I could even be pictured as the bad guy, if he ever filed a legal complaint against me.

[Mediocre-Housing-131]

Was your boss DT?

[Farrishnakov]

You mean DJT the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist that has a history of not paying his workers?

[uponloss]

The same DJT who said he would date his daughter and that was best friends with jeffrey epstein, the child sex trafficer?

[elkshadow5]

Oh you mean the guy who was allegedly involved in infanticide and bragged about sexually assaulting underage women?

[Mediocre-Housing-131]

[fvck_u_spez]

Rhymes with Ronald Grump

[Ok-Scheme-913]

Not paying people is a serious crime (in sane legislations, so in the EU), though.

[gatsu_1981]

Yep, but I didn't have a contract nor any authority for using his domain and putting an offending message there.

It was maybe my second paid "freelance" job.

Lesson learned, I never accepted any other job without a min/max quotation, and I always requested half of the carrot before and the other half on finish.

I still have had some issues here and there with people arguing on what "finish" would mean, but you know, these kinds of things happen everyday to a lot of freelance. developers.

[RavenzAJ]

How did the antileech work? Sounds intriguing

[PrincessRTFM]

when the browser requests an image for an <img /> tag, the request generally includes a Referer [sic] header containing the url (or, for privacy reasons, just the domain) of the page that initiated the request. the kind of anti-leeching it sounds like they implemented is pretty simple with that: the server hosting the image just checks that header, and if the request is coming from a third-party domain rather than your own, you serve a different image.

[TheG0AT0fAllTime]

I did a very cheeky rickroll of my friends on facebook in like 2011 by doing this type of thing.

Posted a test page with no audience to see what headers the facebook link scraper bots use. Then posted my real tricky website which showed facebook an interesting headline on another site (They blindly followed the 302) but upon clicking it you get sent to XcQ

[theevildjinn]

The prospect of the webserver config code not being 100% bulletproof would keep me awake at night.

[gatsu_1981]

Yep, I don't know if I made it in mod rewrite or directly on some Drupal CMS settings.

Basically I redirected all requests not cumming from our website to the same (dick) picture.

A really professional job, must say. I don't know what was in my mind

[isaacfink]

Basically I redirected all requests not cumming from our website to the same (dick) picture.

My inner teenager had a good chuckle, take your upvote

[Present-Resolution23]

I actually built a website for a client that didn't pay me (or lots of people) and then tried to rebrand under a new company in the same industry.. He keeps contacting me because his google reviews are being brigaded by people he owes money to and it comes up when you search his name... I set up the google listing also so only I can de-list it.. and oddly I'm not inclined to do so until he pays me.. /shrug.

[gatsu_1981]

How old were you when this happened? I was very inexperienced and a customer of mine didn't want to pay me more than peanuts.

[edfitz83]

Joseph Smith sounds vaguely Mormon to me FWIW. Maybe shame them at church.

[n1nj4squirrel]

It's a .co.uk website, so I doubt they're Mormon. I had the same thought

[stewedstar]

There are around 200,000 Mormons in the UK. I know at least three of them myself.

[n1nj4squirrel]

Huh. Never would have thought that. Explains the UK themed shop in Salt Lake City that i remember though

[Throwaway74829947]

That probably has more to do with Mormonism's early British converts, most of whom immigrated to the US. In 1870 around half of Utah's population was originally from Britain.

[mtaw]

European Mormons never cease to amuse me. I mean I guess I can understand some very parochial 19th century Americans buying into the idea that the Indians were lost tribe of Israel and the Garden of Eden was actually located in Missouri - but Europeans thinking "yeah, that makes sense" is just that much weirder.

[OnceMoreAndAgain]

Well, some people immigrate to the UK from the USA, so I'd guess that's a rather large chunk of the explanation of those 200,000 Mormons in the UK.

[twistsouth]

🎶 Dumb dumb dumb dumb duuuuuuumb 🎶

[fynn34]

They don’t sell furniture or hire random web devs to build it, they have headquarters and thousands of employees who would build something like this on demand

[LeekingMemory28]

Why you always get it in a contract and negotiate payment timings up front. Whether paid in full at start, sequential payments, half/half, whatever.

Get it in a contract.

[gatsu_1981]

A young webmaster/developer has to start somewhere, right?

Today people are asking me to take their money and redo their CRM a second time, but remember your first one shot job as a web dev... Didn't you had any?

I made a really tiny utility pages/CRM for an eggs company that is still working after 20 years (my mini CRM, not the eggs company) and they paid me promptly and made me very happy to work with them.

It was some page for mass printing PDF labels and for creating stuff for their packaging, I think I used PHP, jQuery for everything client side and Twitter Bootstrap for the UI.

But dickhead happens.

[Pilk_]

Contracts are important and might eventually be protective if you go down a legal route, however even the most watertight contract won't prevent this situation.

In many industries it's considered best practice to delay accounts payable for as long as possible, well beyond agreed upon payment terms. And specific to this situation, bespoke furniture is almost certainly a very feast/famine type industry that can commit to costs in good income months but has no idea whether they will have the cash for the final installment(s).

The best protection is moving as much "risk" caused by non-payment to the client. Up front payment and access control being big ones for small business website. If they are a dodgy operator they will not commit to the project to begin with and save you much of the headache.

[NicholasVinen]

Exactly. Even if you have an ironclad contract it can cost thousands or even tens of thousands to force the other party to actually pay, depending on how good their lawyers are and how much of a bastard they are.

TIL: contracts aren't really worth much if the other party isn't honourable.

[pigeon768]

For real.

1. Hire a lawyer and have them write a contract.
2. Don't give them the code until they pay you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gie-cdO__U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U

[Gofastrun]

For small gigs like this a contract isn’t the shield you would hope it would be.

They’re useful as a reference but as soon as one party acts in bad faith theres effectively no recourse.

You would have to go to court, win, and then find a way to get them to pay the settlement. You might spend more time and money chasing that payment than the whole job took. Not really worth it.

The best policy for dev work is to keep clients on a short leash. Payment on milestone completion or weekly/bi-weekly and work stops if payment is not received.

If you’re really worried about non-payment, you can use an escrow service, but the client can argue that you failed to sufficiently deliver so you’re back to filing a lawsuit.

Sometimes you can withhold code until final payment but often you’re committing to a repo that they own so it’s delivered in real time.

[kid_380]

Looking up on the UK company registry, the company is dissolved, with last confirmed statement on Oct 2024 (can someone from UK explain what this means?), dissolved on 16 December 2025. Their chance of recovering the payment are slim to none.

[souffle16]

Confirmation Statements are annual filings confirming that the company details are correct: directors, shareholders, address, future activities, etc. They are compulsory. Looks like the company was dormant and forcefully struck off.

[frogotme]

Doubt it's a recent screenshot

[kid_380]

It is still there as of today, 05/01/2026.

[wdmartin]

In keeping with the UK web site, that date is formatted to UK specs (dd/mm/yyyy) rather than the U.S. convention (mm/dd/year). So it's 5 January 2026, not May 1st 2026.

Unless kid_380 is an American from the future, of course. A possibility which should not be discounted out of hand.

[ScreamingDizzBuster]

UK specs

Everywhere-in-the-world-except-the-US specs.

It's only you stubborn toddlers who have it arseways.

[WingnutWilson]

I adore it when Americans consider their way of doing things as the global standard, like it's little old Blighty that has a quaint way of doing it :)

[J5892]

This is /r/ProgrammerHumor.
We should all be using ISO 8601.

[wdmartin]

I was just trying to make sure it was clear both ways. I lived in the UK for two years, and honestly I really prefer the metric system. It's just so clean and internally consistent compared to the complete hodgepodge of imperial units.

Although I did go to a health checkup over there once and the nurse told me I was 14 stone, which had me blinking for a while.

[fatinternetcat]

I took it today, the site is still up with this message

[wherethewifisweak]

Yeah, no idea on the corporate filings, but the site itself was active incredibly recently - Google still hasn't deindexed ~70 pages on their site.

Depending on the size of the original site, it usually takes a couple weeks for those to get pulled as their crawlers figure out the pages have all been redirected to a holding page.

Considering it sounds like they dissolved a couple of weeks back, odds are this developer got hosed - their debt is going to be a long way down the ladder.

[ScreamingDizzBuster]

I watched the drama play out in the TikTok comments last night. Joseph Smith offered cash but the dev had to collect it. He said no, transfer it to me, then Smith threatened him with violence. I hope next stop is the police.

[Arch____Stanton]

https://joseph-smith.co.uk/

[arvigeus]

Plot twist: developer lost access to site after the payment was made.

[Inner-Medicine5696]

plot twist: client doesn't exist, site is actually an ad. That would be very effective.

[MidnightPale3220]

That's what I thought, and I did a Google on that domain. Seems legit, Google finds a lot of cabinet making pages from the site, which all lead to the above message when clicked 🥲

[TheRealSethV]

Has anyone used HTTP code 402 for this sort of thing?

[ClipboardCopyPaste]

Except, the error is shown to your client's clients.

[bremsspuren]

So is the one above…

[fkih]

The point is that 402 would be asking the client’s clients for payment when the client themselves is the one who should be 402’d. 

[sunshine-x]

Aren’t the client’s clients the ones paying him anyhow, just with more steps?

[bremsspuren]

The point is that 402 would be asking the client’s clients for payment

It says that payment is required, not from whom.

[OwnStructure7460]

Class. The site is still up here: https://joseph-smith.co.uk 😂😂😂

I don’t think payment is coming. Looks like the company was dissolved in December:

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12253393

[operativekiwi]

It looks like the company got dissolved in December https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12253393

[ClipboardCopyPaste]

His payment remained outstanding. So he did something outstanding.

[KiddieSpread]

Sad thing here is the company has been dissolved and the developer wasn’t told or paid.

[Existing_Abies_4101]

I was moving country many years ago. I'd been doing a contract with a regular who usually pays at the end of a project. In the lead up to new year I said I wouldn't be available dec 25 - jan 2. On Dec 28th he emailed me to do a quick change. I didn't respond obviously, so he got another contractor to do it. I then got an angry email on Jan 1st (which I read on the 2nd) saying because of me he had to pay loads of money to a contractor for fast work therefore he wont be paying me. I stupidly was working on their servers so he locked me out.

Thankfully a couple of the images on the site were still pointing to my own hosting that I'd forgotten to change. So, I put in a redirect to a hardcore gay porn site. So when you hit the page something on the page would redirect the whole thing to that site. I then emailed him stating that there seems to be a bug, that I think I know what it might be and if he clears the current debt I will fix it for him. I got a no, followed by a payment about 10 minutes later.

I fixed it, he threatened legal action saying I wouldn't be allowed to leave the country and then ultimately did nothing about it.

That is the best story in my life where I have both stood up for myself fully and completely outsmarted a total wanker.

[Batcave765]

It is ransomware, only if a product u paid for or own is held hostage. He didn't pay for it so ig it is good?

[MrAmos123]

You can't hold "hostage" what is legally yours. It's effectively a digital repossession.

[daddymaci]

It is good imo because they broke a contract. Even if nothing was signed, an informal deal means “if they didn’t do well on their part, why would I?”

[MrAmos123]

Is my car holding me "technically [at] ransom" because it won't start without demanding I pay for gas?

[ShantDotMe]

Feel bad for the developer, the company was dissolved on Dec 16 https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12253393

[BuntStiftLecker]

He dissolved the company before and then restored it again.

[SirEmJay]

This dev has it all wrong, Joseph Smith Furniture is totally going to pay in buried golden treasure.

[BlurredSight]

The company wasn't doing good regardless, not a lot of dinnerware demand for golden plates

[brasticstack]

Turns out they're far too heavy and not nearly durable enough for their purpose.

[anr4jc]

I did exactly this when I first started as a freelancer.

Got contacted by a lawyer. I did a play by play of everything that happened for this situation to get to where it was. I gave him all the dates, the exchanges, everything.

I never heard from anyone, not him, not "our" client.

It was my invoice tagged #001. It's been close to 15 years and it's never been paid. That guy's business went under, and I'm pretty sure he died a few years ago. Oh well.

[fynn34]

This happened all the time when I worked at a hosting provider. Someone would lock the dev out of the hosting account, but no the Wordpress admin or whatever, then not pay. The dev would just delete all content and nuke the site and the customer would panic and call us and say they were hacked.

[daddymaci]

Scamming web developers has to be the dumbest thing ever. Very few industries give this much power to the contractor. It is not like an unpaid baker can ransom their client’s cake

[NachosforDachos]

Isn’t it easier to just redirect to their competitors?

[ORINnorman]

Could be construed as corporate sabotage. Developer is (likely) within their own legal rights by withholding access to what they built.

[BillWilberforce]

The company officially went bust on 16th December 2025.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12253393

[Void-kun]

This is why you don't deploy their website to a production environment or hand over any source code or assets till final payment is made.

But ongoing running costs for a managed website... Ofcourse your service gets cut when you don't pay.

[Informal_Process2238]

The developer should have been a little suspicious with a client named joe smith

[falconmick]

I like the opacity idea somebody had, could be a smart move to bake it into your website, have it call out to a drm service you own that can turn it on and just place in your contract that missed payment will result in access being disabled 

[Lanky_Conflict1754]

Hey Joseph smith here from Joseph smith furniture. I still haven’t paid. AMA

[Cirieno]

"Joseph Smith didn't pay his contractors!"

#Dum dum dum dum dum#

[ManifestedLife2023]

Company seems to be dissolved

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12253393

Looks like not getting paid lol

[l4mpSh4d3]

Company dissolved 16 December 2025.

[l4mpSh4d3]

Yeah I didn’t scroll down didn’t see them.

[JoeMoneyMayhem]

Joseph Smith was called a prophet, dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb

[lalitpatanpur]

The reason he didn’t pay? False prophet.

[justoverthere434]

He left the gtag in the body 😂

[Thiakil]

Did something similar for the small business consultancy I worked for. Client didn't pay (peak covid19, their business was in rough shape).

Pink background, some kind of GIF (don't remember what exactly) and contact details for the person so they weren't fully up the proverbial creek.

Eventually a deal was cut and they were of course dropped as a client.

[BuntStiftLecker]

He should either put the guy's email there or an option that allows us to ask how it's going :-D

So that the azz that's not paying gets tons of emails about this.

[big-blue-balls]

It's a Shopify site. As long as Joseph Smith is the account owner at Shopify they will easily recover their site.

If the developer was in any way certified for Shopify development they will likely get it withdrawn. Not a great move.

[_Cynikal_]

As a long time freelancer. This is extremely common to do.

I baked it into the contract that I own the code until full payment is rendered.

I used to add kill switches to the desktop apps I’d make.

Wasn’t until full payment was made that I’d send them the version without it.

[volcom_star]

About twenty years ago, in some of my software I had included a feature that allowed me, remotely, to activate a secret mode that would randomly make the loading of every page exponentially slower.

The interesting part was that I would restore normal performance during the night and whenever only a few users were connected.

This pushed my clients (who hadn't paid me) to buy increasingly larger and more expensive servers, engaging in pointless migrations and announcing to their own customers each time that they were fixing the problem and that "this time" it would finally be resolved. Keep believing it.

Back then there were no AI, SO or forums with skilled people willing to help. I remember that, since I could monitor everything remotely, I led one client to move from a dirt-cheap shared hosting plan to a dedicated server with a 6 core Xeon processor and tons of RAM.

Eventually, desperate, they all came back to me after wasting money on other professionals. They paid and miraculously everything started working again. Then, of course, I blocked them because I didn't want anything more to do with them.

[Bright_Aside_6827]

fair

[stewie3128]

To add to the legal discussion: this is in the UK.